Punch it up: Marvel and Netflix's fourth comic book series will soon hit us square in our television-watching faces.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

True, it was all quiet on the Iron Fist front for quite a while - leading to rumours the show had been canned. But now we not only have a show runner, but an actual bona fide star for the martial arts-flavoured superhero adaptation – one that that will follow Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage onto the mean streets of New York's Hell's Kitchen.

IRON FIST CAST: A Game of Ninjas

Marvel and Netflix must have a thing for Brits, as Game of Thrones star Finn Jones will be following Daredevil's Charlie Cox onto the streaming service as the latest of the defenders of Hell's Kitchen.

He will play Danny Rand, a warrior trained in the martial arts with the power to focus his chi energy (totally a thing) to enhance his physical abilities to superhuman levels. In the comics, he is raised and trained in the interdimensional city K'un-Lun – which appears on Earth once every ten years – when his parents are killed while travelling with him through the Himalayas.

After years of training, he acquires the power of the Iron Fist after defeating a dragon in hand-to-hand combat(!), and returns back to Earth with revenge on his mind.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

From the first teaser above, it looks like Danny might find himself sectioned after his return for all his talk of a magical, interdimensional city. But they didn't count on the Iron Fist's ability to punch through walls.

The character was created in the '70s at the height of the kung fu craze, but it was decided to make him white rather than Asian – comics having an unfortunate history when it comes to the portrayal of ethnicity. So the question was whether they would change Danny's race when bringing him to the screen.

Obviously, they have chosen to stick to the classic portrayal of the character by choosing Jones – who you will most likely recognise as Game of Thrones' Ser Loras Tyrell, the late lover of the late would-be king Renly Baratheon.

Beyond that, Jones has also appeared on Hollyoaks, The Bill, Doctors and The Sarah Jane Adventures – and we're keen to see just how well those have prepped him for some martial arts madness.

Iron Fist is also on its way to becoming a regular Game of Thrones reunion, with Jessica Henwick – who plays Oberyn Martell's Sand Snake Nymeria – taking on the role of Colleen Wing.

Wing is a martial artist who debuted in an early Luke Cage comic, and has long been associated with Danny via him and the Heroes for Hire.

David Wenham (Lord of the Rings, 300) will play Harold Meachum, the former partner of Danny's father who was responsible for his parents' deaths, with Jessica Stroup (The Following) as his daughter, Joy Meachum, and Tom Pelphrey as his son Ward.

Carrie-Anne Moss will also be reprising her Jessica Jones role as Jeri Hogarth. The original, male Jeryn Hogarth is a lawyer with a longstanding connection to both Danny and Luke. Daredevil character Wai Ching is back as the enigmatic Madame Gao, and Rosario Dawson will return (again) as Claire Temple. Surely it's only a matter of time before she is revealed to be the evil mastermind pulling the strings of New York City's underworld, right?

IRON FIST SHOWRUNNER: Serial killers to superheroes

Writer Scott Buck will be taking the reins on Iron Fist as the series' showrunner. He began life as a sitcom writer before getting his big break on the brilliant Six Feet Under.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Since then, he's worked on the second season of Rome but is probably best known for his work on Dexter, scoring a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for his writing and graduating to executive producer and, eventually, showrunner.

Marvel television boss Jeph Loeb said that Buck has "a take on Iron Fist that quite simply knocked us off our feet". No pressure, then!

IRON FIST PLOT: Heroes for Hire

The core of the show seems to be following the traditional Iron Fist origin – with Danny being trained as a warrior in K'un-Lun and returning to New York as a young man.

"We open with a very simple premise, which is, at the age of 10, Danny vanished off the face of the Earth," Marvel TV chief Jeph Loeb, who is executive producer on the show, told Coming Soon.

"The world believes that the son of a billionaire is gone. When he reappears at the beginning of the show, and he's 25 years old. He announces, 'I'm here'. Has no proof, has no identity, has no DNA.

"One of the things that's fantastic about the show is, it's very much a mystery. It's very much a, 'how do you go about proving who you are when there's no way to do that.' That's not just the story, that's also the theme of it, which is, 'how do you go about proving who you are when no one knows,' including yourself, 'what's happened to you'."

In the comics, Danny is best known for his partnership with Luke Cage (known collectively as the Heroes for Hire, accepting payment for anything from bodyguard work to laying the smackdown on supervillains). Seeing as the shows are leading up to a Defenders team-up for Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil, it would make sense to begin building that classic partnership in this series. There's been no confirmation of that yet, although

Daredevil season one introduced us to the mysterious and apparently superpowered heroin dealer Madame Gao, who is back for Iron Fist. While everyone assumed that she was from China, she told Wilson Fisk's goon Leland Owsley that she hailed from "a considerable distance further".

Could she be from K'un-Lun? And if the city's people are dealing drugs in Manhattan, that might be an indication that something bad is going down in Iron Fist's adopted home.